A/N: Finally! I have finished playing Fatal Frame III in normal mode! There were these really cool features that I've unlocked. The ending was so great (I cried) that I have to thank TECMO and PROJECT Zero for making such an awesome storyline! I'm recommending this game to everyone in the world!Thank you for the wonderful reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and the storyline...'nuff said.

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The Tormented

By: Elie

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Eyes now filled with tremor, Xiaoyu felt a familiar eerie sensation now that she's inside the mansion. She turned on the flashlight and focused it on what's before her. There was a big cubicle covered in paper paneled doors. In the cubicle, there was a small opening on the window screen in which you can see through on what's happening inside.

'No one must enter the shrine and spill the rift…'

Xiaoyu turned white. Is it really what she heard? Someone was also inside the mansion, and that a loud grumpy voice could be heard inside the cubicle. Xiaoyu felt her heart rise. It was because she was hopeful that she wasn't alone in this scary mansion, and yet afraid because she doesn't know to whom the voice was.

"I need to get out of here…" Xiaoyu thought to herself, gripping the flashlight in her hand. The mansion was as cold as ice. It was quiet as well, except if some unexpected noise would thunder out of nowhere. The situation was getting real weird as well as the darkness that seemed to grow when it was just noontime a while ago.

Moving her hands to her pockets, Xiaoyu found something bulging from the right part. Curiously, she took it out, and to her surprise, it was the least expected thing she would bring if she were on a trip to a haunted house. "My camera! I forgot that I have this with me!"

Like a teenager on a ghost haunting, Xiaoyu moved closer to the cubicle and took a peek at the slightly opened paper doors. What she discovered though, made her either want to puke or faint. However, it was too interesting to die on the spot. This was surely an opportunity she couldn't miss.

Standing on the floorboards, there was a man with his back turned, dressed in white priest robes and a tall scout hat on top of his head. He looked transparent and ghastly. Indeed, no doubt that it was a ghost.

Quickly, Xiaoyu aligned her camera at the ghost and focused its shutter at the head part. Before she took the shot, she heard it mumbling to himself problematically. If only she could get out of this place quick, she would develop the film right away.

Taking off the camera from her face, Xiaoyu took a last peep at the slightly opened door to see if the ghost was still there. But to no avail, it was gone. Her eyebrows then began to meet each other. "Was what I saw real?"

Satisfied, she walked up to where the real opening of the cubicle was. Actually, the cubicle was some kind of hearth room where the tea ceremonies are usually held. Judging from its burnt facade, it looks like an old, rotten place.

Ting

"The sound again!" Xiaoyu wiggled the flashlight almost to anywhere around the room. She discovered there were a stair and an open second floor. There was also a seemingly old and burnt paper closet. Xiaoyu ignored these, though, and turned to where a bright object seemed to be walking…

Ting

"Jin!" Xiaoyu cried, seeing to it that the bright object was Jin's spirit. Jin died in a car accident a month ago right in the area where a similar mansion as to this one was said to have had existed. "Don't go Jin!"

Xiaoyu ran after Jin until he dissolved in her midst. Xiaoyu stopped dead at a door and began to think twice before opening it.

"Who dares disturb the Priestess?"

Freezing, Xiaoyu turned her head behind her back just to see the very same ghost earlier was running up to her carrying a blood soaked scythe.

"You cannot escape!"

Xiaoyu was speechless and she was trembling as hard as before. It was impossible. How can a real ghost kill her? That is, if this was just a dream…

Turning back to the door as well, Xiaoyu pushed it open and ran as fast as she could along the narrow corridor up to the wide staircase. The Priestly ghost was just behind her back, crying out the same sentences over and over again.

"This has to end!" Xiaoyu shouted in her mind, reaching a door that seemed to be her final solution. She thrust her body against it and broke it open. But all she saw was bright light and then she was…out.

Ting

The sound of the bell tingled again. Something bright was walking toward a big double door. It was Jin's spirit. Xiaoyu couldn't make out much of him, though. A tall, slender tree was blocking the view and some bamboo stakes were sprouting out with doll-like objects skewered in them. The miasma was getting thicker, deadlier, as well.

Xiaoyu ran to where Jin disappeared into a while ago, and passed by an opening to a narrow space.

"Stay here…Forever…"

There, she saw a little long haired girl wearing a kimono. The girl seemed to give her a sinister smile before vanishing. She shivered at this a bit and continued to run.

"I want to be with you Jin," Xiaoyu panted heavily but kept on going until she reached the door and pushed it open, "because you were always there with me!"

A bright light shone again and Xiaoyu just found herself in a big shrine. The shrine itself seemed to have been enclosed in the manor. "Is this really the Kuze Shrine?"

The Kuze Shrine is a legendary shrine located in the mountains. It is where people are said to offer up their pains for the ones they have lost or loved. A Priestess takes on the pain by engraving a tattoo on her body. After these tattoos or pains have filled her body, the Priestess must sleep for eternity and dream of these pains. But there's something more…

Ting

In front of her, there was another shrine not far from where she was standing. And there was Jin, facing her now.

"Jin!" Xiaoyu ran toward the shrine and held up her hand. She waved it madly and cried out Jin's name several times. "I have something to tell you!"

"Xiao," To her surprise, Jin spoke. Her heart squeezed, and it yearned for him like crazy. She stopped running and halted in front of the five-stepped stairs, glancing at Jin who was staring down at her as well. "Xiao….I…"

"Jin, I'm so so—"

Her sentence was cut short when she immediately returned back to reality. She was holding her camera and was facing a barred hallway. Struggling to compose herself, Xiaoyu looked around to find Asuka. "Was that all an...illusion?"

"Xiao, are you okay? You were staring blankly over there for quite a while." Asuka Kazama asked, holding a camera stand with her. She looked at her boss with sincere concern.

"Yeah…I'm fine." Xiaoyu answered, wiping the sweat on her forehead. She looked around the place one more time, and shrugged. "I though this place was haunted…"

"Maybe rumors are just rumors…" Asuka said, taking the brief case full of camera equipment with the stand. "I'm going to load these up." She glanced around the room as well and went outside.

Xiaoyu remained. She couldn't quite explain what happened especially that Jin was in it. All she wanted to do was to say…sorry.

The mansion was another story. When she got home and slept, she dreamt of it again. Somehow in her heart, if she goes there, deeper and further, she would see Jin…again.

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A/N: Okay, what do you guys think? My computer's video card had a problem, but now we bought a new one and it's really cool and powerful, so I guess I'm going to update more often. Hopefully, you guys will review! See ya!